These next two weeks I will be spending primarily in St. Mary’s City, trying to make a final push in the lab towards completing the analysis I need to do on the dissertation. This means long days in the lab, quick stops for dinner, and then back to the lab at night to look over more artifacts, scan more slides of photographs, and whatever else needs to be done. All that sitting around in a dark lonely basement, however, does require some of this time to be spent moving, so today I went on a jog along the wonderful trail that weaves through the forest in St. Mary’s, and along the St. Mary’s River.
I’ve never been a big fan of running, in large part because I always find it boring. I spend most of my run thinking about how little I want to be running. This summer, however, I took up trail running, which is much more exciting then running along a road. First, no cars. Second, pretty things to see. Third, the path changes, you have to dodge roots, the terrain changes. It is challenging for different reasons: running on the road was challenging because I hated it. Running on a trail is challenging because it’s difficult and things change.
Today, I finally added a new component to the process that I’ve been wanting to start doing for a while: running with my camera. I strapped my camera bag (a Mountainsmith Day TLS converted into a camera bag thanks to the Kit Cube) to my back, and was able to carry my Canon EOS Rebel T3 safely and securely along with me on the trail. The support provided by the bag, both around the waist and with th shoulder strap, kept it from flopping around. I stopped a couple times along the route to take some shots, my favorites of which you see here. I specifically tried to go at sunset, in hopes of catching one of the magical displays nature puts on each evening at St. Mary’s. Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy. But, the river never ceases to amaze, and I was able to find a few interesting objects along the river bank.
See my run at Runkeeper
See my photos at Flickr
